The believers of Jesus Christ were first called followers of “the way” in the Acts of the Apostles. Later, they were given the name “Christians” in the city of Antioch, still during the era of the New Testament. The term “Christian” literally means “little Christ”—which perfectly represents what happens to a person who is a Baptized follower of Jesus Christ. We turn our lives over to Him and live, not our own life, but the life of Jesus within us. Catholics are Christians, because we believe that Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God the Father, is Lord. We confess that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead. We confess that the Church, animated by the Holy Spirit He sent to the Apostles, is the mystical Body of Christ that carries on His mission in the world. As Catholic-Christians, we trace our lineage back to St. Peter and the other Apostles—the heritage of our doctrine, Sacraments and worship, hierarchy and practices can be connected to the most ancient Church leaders and teachings.
The term “Catholic” was first used to refer to all Christians in the early 100’s by Saint Ignatius of Antioch. The word “catholic” means “universal.” As the Christian faith spread to new cities, new countries and even to new continents, the leaders of the Church used this term to indicate the unity and universality of faith in Jesus Christ. No matter how far the Church spread into new cultures or ethnic groups, the church was “catholic” or universal in its appeal and in its structure. While Jesus came from the Chosen People, all people are “grafted on” to Abraham’s line and are incorporated into the Covenant made first with the Jews. All nations are led to salvation through the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. The early Church leaders discerned that faith in Jesus Christ did not have to be founded on becoming a Jew first and following all 613 laws of the Jewish Covenant. Our Christian faith fulfills Judaism, but through a new Covenant sacrifice of the blood of Jesus Christ. The term “Catholic” perfectly describes the universal nature of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, who told His Apostles to go and preach the Gospel to all nations.
In preaching the Gospel to all nations, we profess that all people are equally made in the image and likeness of God. We are all invited into the same profound, life-giving, and saving relationship with God. And all these people, beloved of God, are incorporated into the one Body of Christ. People of every race, nation, language, and culture belong to the universal family of God. The incredible diversity of the human family was not an accident or mistake in God’s design. It is something to be cherished and guarded by the Church. But diversity for its own sake leads to splintering, disintegration, and chaos: the diversity of cells, tissue and organs within a human body decomposes without the cohering animation of the spirit. In the same way, the Holy Spirit animates the Body of Christ and unites the diversity to serve and worship One life: the life of Jesus Christ, the head. This is why authority and hierarchy are so valued in the Catholic Church.
For the first 9 centuries of the Church’s existence, the terms “Catholic” and “Christian” were synonymous. The term “catholic” became more narrowly used to describe the Catholic Church when the Christian community broke apart by schisms: the first occurred when the Orthodox Churches broke away from the Catholic Church in the late 900’s; the second major schism began with the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s. Now there are tens of thousands of denominations of Christian communities that are united in our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior. But not all Christians belong to the Catholic Church founded on the 12 apostles and still led by their successors, the Bishops (united under the Bishop of Rome, the Pope). We still share the first thousand years with all Christians. The Bible, the Nicene Creed, the saints and prayers of those first centuries are treasures which all Christians rightfully claim as their own possession. We Catholics never jettisoned anything that was preserved by later communities that separated from us: we possess the fullness of the revelation Jesus left with His Apostles (we call this the “deposit of faith”). It is the role of the leaders of the Catholic Church to define, defend and preserve this treasure for future generations until Christ’s return.
The church expresses its “catholicity” through its union to the Bishop of Rome, who occupies the chair of St. Peter, the first among all the apostles. The authority of leadership within the Church is not intended to discount or diminish the diversity within the Body: its purpose is to focus the entire Body on carrying out the commands of the Head, Jesus Christ. The pope guides the Body of Christ in discerning and interpreting the voice of Jesus—especially as it pertains to the mission Christ left the Church to spread the Gospel, teach the truth, and worship the Lord. Why doesn’t the Church just allow each individual Christian to discern for him or herself what Jesus is commanding? In fact, she often does. The Church’s leadership, the Pope and other Bishops, sets parameters, boundaries and “non-negotiables” about our faith—and then we Catholics who live in this world (in it, but not “of” it) are encouraged to order our lives by interpreting how these truths apply to our situation, and to evangelize others in our sphere of influence.
From the moment Jesus left the Church when He ascended into Heaven, He intended the Church’s leaders to serve the Body (not “lord it over”). The first decisions the Church made, she made by the leadership of St. Peter: from choosing another Apostle to replace Judas to baptizing non-Jews who accepted the faith. These decisions weren’t explicitly guided by Jesus’ teachings. The Apostles had to discern the will of God. They did so by the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through St. Peter, through their discussion and debate, and through the lives and example of other Christian believers. The same is true today in the Church. Our catholicity doesn’t serve the leadership of the pope, the pope serves to protect and guide the catholicity of the Church.
We confess faith in a Church that is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” These are the Four Marks of the Church. They identify the Church Jesus founded on the 12 Apostles—the Church that would serve as the “New Israel” that would welcome all people into the covenant God was offering to everyone who would repent and believe. The catholic nature of the Church is best reflected in the diverse group of canonized saints whom we lift up as models of heroic sanctity. Saints are canonized because they reflect a perfection of the virtues; they are the ones whom Christ shines through with exceptional clarity and beauty and power. Yet, who could ever imagine a more diverse group of people! We find canonized saints from every stage of life: from the murdered infants of Bethlehem to those of advanced age such as Ignatius of Antioch. Canonized saints have come from every century and from every continent. Canonized saints reflect the beautiful diversity and complexity of the human family in skin color, ethnic origin, culture and language. Canonized saints exhibit the full range of personality traits, talents and abilities found in the human person. Canonized saints also struggled against every kind of vice, weakness, disability and ailment found in humanity.
The Church offers these canonized saints as models for all Christians—regardless of our own gender, ethnicity, culture and personality. My own lineage of spiritual growth traces its origin, in no small part, to an African bishop from the 4th century (St. Augustine of Hippo), whose own conversion was orchestrated through the writings of a Jewish murderer turned Apostle from the 1st century (St. Paul). How marvelous is the unity of the Body of Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit!
In the Catholic Church, the distinctiveness and uniqueness of human persons doesn’t have to separate us into factions and “tribes.” This truth hasn’t always been reflected in the actions of the Church’s leaders or by her members. The sinful attitudes and actions of divisiveness and discrimination damage us still. Jesus prayed for His Church at the Last Supper. He knew that the temptation to divide and separate would be present until His return. So He prayed for us. He prayed that we would be one, as He and the Father are one. He prayed that we would love one another as He loved us. At our best, the Catholic Church reflects this as no other institution ever has on our planet. The painful sins against unity are a humbling reminder that, even with every grace given to us by God, we still are a Church comprised of sinners.
So how can we who aren’t in the Church’s hierarchy help foster a truly “catholic” Catholic Church? I suggest a twofold approach: first, to reject any divisiveness around matters of “taste” and second, to avoid any accommodations around matters of doctrine. Our evaluations of each other are often centered on matters of taste: you like that brand of coffee?! You wear those clothes?! You listen to or read those authors?! We have been trained, since the middle-school years we all unfortunately endured, to care most about what is most superficial. We learned to elevate ourselves by making cruel and arbitrary judgments about others—and to think it our right and responsibility to offer an evaluation of every human person who wanders past us. Our fallen human nature loves to make our self esteem dependent upon the denigration of others, the separation of people into the popular and unpopular. We judge others based on matters outside their control or on matters that don’t really matter!
I recall a walk I took during December around our neighborhood in Eugene. Our house was in a block of fairly modest homes built in the 1960’s. I would often walk past our church and into a newer neighborhood filled with larger and pricier homes, many less than a decade old. On this walk, I was enjoying the light displays on the different houses. Of course, in my mind, I was automatically making judgments about them: too many yard ornaments there, didn’t like the ‘cool white’ bulbs on that house, and, oh my gosh!, what corny canned music in that yard! I came to a house where an older man was setting up yard ornaments. He had already placed a garish inflatable snowman and was working on a tinseled and lit-up deer—the kind with the head that turns back and forth. It looked like an advertisement for “Christmas at the Dollar Store” to me, and I scoffed, inwardly, at the bad taste on display for all the neighbors. Then I met his eyes. I smiled and he immediately smiled and stepped back from that obnoxious deer with a look of pride and expectation. “It’s very bright,” I commented nicely. “Yes, I love it!” he replied, “Do you think I should move it over a bit to balance out the snowman?” He looked as intense and focused as a great artist wondering how to best display his sculptures in a gallery.
I stopped and looked at the garish display again, and the Holy Spirit convicted my heart. This man’s joy was palpable; he was filled with enthusiasm. To him, the pieces he selected for his yard were just what he wanted. And his opinion was as valid as mine—certainly more so with respect to who had the authority to decorate his yard! I looked again and, instead of seeing things from my point of view, I saw what he saw. And it filled me with joy. Rather than feeling a need to separate myself, prove myself more sophisticated, more artistic, more “high class,” I simply enjoyed what I saw. What a humbling realization that my desire to evaluate other people had very little to do with the objective situation—and more to do with my own selfish, anxious desire to “look good” to the “with it” people who I suspected were negatively judging me! I commented to the man that I thought the deer was perfectly placed—he could see it from inside his house from that angle as well as being a good place for those walking by. He looked pleased and gave the deer a little nudge to put it just right. I wished him “Merry Christmas” and walked on. “Lord,” I prayed, “help me value the person I see, and not evaluate them.”
Another time I was driving to one of my favorite birdwatching sites at the western edge of Eugene. As I came to a stoplight, I glanced over at the house next door to the road. Inside I saw a very obese man sitting at his kitchen table in a sleeveless T-shirt, smoking a cigar and reading the paper. “Gross,” I thought to myself as I observed his bulbous belly, unshaven face, and cloud of cigar smoke obscuring the top of his head. The Holy Spirit interrupted my thoughts and convicted me of my judgmental heart. The Lord reminded me that this man, whom I so carelessly and thoughtlessly judged by his appearance, was a person he was madly in love with and had died for—a person destined for heavenly glory. I looked again at the man, and it seemed as if the smoke circling his head became a ‘glory cloud’ of the Lord’s presence. As he sat at his kitchen table, the contentment and peace emanating from him revealed him basking in the glow of the Holy Spirit hovering over him. I realized, to my shame, that I rarely sought to see people as God saw them—and I seemed willing to trust my judgment about them more than I considered God’s.
The ‘catholic’ Catholic Church is the means of salvation for all people—those with elevated, sophisticated tastes and those without. Those who are learned and erudite, and those who rarely read anything more complicated than the menu at the local service station. Those who express an outgoing, mercurial personality and those more reticent and withdrawn. Those who might be considered exemplary human beings in personality, appearance, or talents—and those who possess no quality that has ever been praised or admired. The wealthy and impoverished. The whole and healthy, the broken and sickly. The popular and the marginalized, the admired and the despised. Those who have a great capacity to contribute to society, and those who always seem to be in crisis and needy. Catholic means catholic. Our task as members of this Catholic church is to welcome, receive, protect, and treasure one another. People don’t need our judgments and evaluations concerning their likes/dislikes, their personalities, their talents (or lack thereof), or their interests. Our Church grows more vigorous when we allow the Body to function—each part contributing in a unique way to the health and strength and capacities of the Body. Thank God we’re not all the same—for then we’d be a “blob,” not a Body!
The second approach to fostering catholicity is to honor and protect the non-negotiables—the truths of our faith that can’t be rejected or ignored. When we are clear about that, we serve the catholicity of the Body in a different but just as necessary way—protecting the Body corporate (and the individual members of it) from the spiritual equivalents of disease, bad habits and risky behavior. While accommodating various tastes and features and personalities is essential, it is also essential to not compromise on Doctrine. We can’t compromise on the centrality of Jesus Christ. We can’t compromise on the reality of heaven and hell—and the truth that we will all face judgment at the end of our life on earth. We can’t compromise on the truth that there is One God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and that this One God demands we worship Him, and Him alone. Accommodating in matters of doctrine is as unwise as a person “accommodating” infection in his body because he doesn’t want to be intolerant and judgmental.
What distinguishes matters of taste from non-negotiable doctrine? Personal taste cannot be used by Christians to justify acts that directly violate God’s commandments, or that reflect a twisting or negation of reality, or that lead one down the path of harming oneself or another. Since God’s commandments forbidding fornication are absolutely clear in the Bible, a Christian cannot truthfully say that the choice to live together is a matter of personal taste—and that the Church should be “accepting” of their choice. God has claimed dominion over matters of chastity and purity—as well as over other “personal” areas of human life. I may be attracted to cutting myself with a razor to escape from the pain of a mental illness or memories of abuse, but this is an objectively disordered action—it rests upon a faulty understanding of the human person and it is an irrational solution to the problem. When someone confesses that they’ve been “cutting,” one doesn’t respond by saying, “Well, if that’s what you want to do, then go for it.” No, we want to help them choose healthier ways of resolving pain—and caring for their body as a Temple of the Holy Spirit. There is no commandment forbidding us from enjoying a donut after Mass, but if my donut habit leads me to indulge in others junk foods full of fat and sugar, then I am jeopardizing my good health and not treating my body as a gift from God. As my indulgence grows, it turns into a vice (bad habit) that can lead to actions with more serious moral implications. Better to ‘nip it in the bud’ than to allow bad choices to grow into vice.
Non-negotiables that cannot be left open to interpretation or “personal taste” are defined in our Creed. They are spelled out in our Catechism of the Catholic Church. They are experienced in our worship and Sacraments, and they are embodied in our moral codes. What happens when someone refuses, obstinately and publicly, to profess these beliefs and obey the Church’s rightful authority in these matters? Then they have taken themselves outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church.
We see them as brothers and sisters still—perhaps no longer in a present reality, but as a possibility in the future. We love them and pray for their souls. We long for them to return. There is no one who walks away from the Church who is not missed. Even those who feel as if no one will notice if they stopped attending Mass are missed and mourned by the “Church triumphant” in heaven. There is no one to whom we would say, “Good riddance.” Even the most public and heinous of sinners could return to the Church—if they repented and sought reconciliation. And our role? To learn a lesson from the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son—to join in the celebration that extends all the way from heaven when someone comes back to the Father.
We are forbidden by our God and our Church to hate the sinner, the heretic, the schismatic or the truly perverted (even if we hate the harm caused by their sins). We are charged with accompanying those who struggle in their faith—to help others find a way to live within the reality of a doctrine, commandment or practice that is a ‘stumbling block.’ But the way to accompany people who are struggling is to inspire, guide, support, and challenge—not to excuse them or to water down the teaching or to pretend it isn’t important. It would be like a doctor telling us that, although our blood pressure is dangerously high, he doesn’t want to prescribe the medication we need and tell us how to change our diet and exercise regime in case that would make us feel bad about ourselves. We need the diagnosis and the prescription—and someone who can keep us working toward the goal of good health!
The same is true in our faith. How do we proceed in situations where we need to protect and guard the unity of shared Doctrine and rightful Church authority? With charity. With the same patience God has shown us in His mercy. With creativity, joy, and gratitude. With the light of truth, guided and gifted by the Holy Spirit. With charity. The Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth the Jesus left with the Apostles—and God will not and cannot lie to us. The commandments He has given us, the truths He has taught us, and the example He left us are real—and therefore they are not negotiable “options.”
Does this mean every Christian ends up being identical, as items coming off a production line in some factory? Of course not! The saints teach us the opposite! As each person reflects the objective truth and reality of our One good God, we divide the light of Christ into innumerable beams, each giving us a different spectrum of light and sending that light into a slightly different corner of God’s creation. Diversity has its origins in the magnificent and powerful creative unity of our One God. Our diversity serves to glorify God, and through diversity we are drawn into our own unique place within the unity of God.
The outstanding, penultimate examples of our catholicity are the saints. Where else could one find such diversity? We have a morose, argumentative saint like Jerome in heaven alongside a joyful, jokester of a showman like Philip Neri. We have the most intelligent man every born (Thomas Aquinas) united with the most simple-minded and dense among us. We have saints who demonstrated the pinnacle of physical beauty, grace, and poise—and just as celebrated are the saints who were unattractive, clumsy, and awkward in this life. We have saints who lived long lives where they enjoyed the esteem and admiration of entire nations—and we honor saints who died in torment, mocked, humiliated, and despised by all around them. We have saints who could create masterpieces of music, sculpture or art and we have other saints who found all that tiresome and pretentious. We have saints who could create masterpieces of art, and saints who were drawn to garishly painted plastic lawn statues. There are saints in heaven who dined on caviar and foie gras, and those who loved bologna and Little Debbies. We have saints who were amazing and effective leaders of countries, and those who couldn’t lead anybody out of a room with open doors. We have saints who lived their entire lives with sanctity and the exercise of countless virtues—and we have others who, after years of dissipation and scandal, gave themselves to Christ and called out for mercy at the very end of their lives.
What brings all these diverse personalities together in heaven? The love of God—not our love for Him, but His for every soul He designed, no exceptions. The Catholic Church embodies this love in her eagerness to reach all people, of every place and in every age, with the Good News of our salvation. What makes the Church catholic? The universal love of God for every human soul.
Flourish Catholic 